— Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
He stares down, deep sapphire strands caressing down his shoulders and chest. I should see anger on his face, an arrogant sneer. Eyes creased in haughty triumph for bringing the enemy of his House and crown so low. Even the remote disdain of someone who defines power faced with someone who defines a chasm of less.
Instead I see the stillness of arctic seas, and deep, deep, where creatures more terrifying than sharks and krakens lurk, he contains the anger, the despair, the aching loneliness of ages, the savagery of wanting something that for all his power lies just beyond grasp.
His gaze captures mine and the knowledgebehind it pierces my rage. I want to shield my face. I want to weep. I shouldn’t feel this pain, this guilt, this famished need.
This sudden sense that my entire life I’ve been missing a piece of me I hadn’t known existed. That perhaps my years of grief, the keening in the recesses of my soul driving me nearly mad some days isn’t for my mother, my brother, my people.
Under the gaze of the Prince, everything begins to unravel.
His hand latches around my throat and he pulls me to my feet as easily as I would pluck a dandelion from a field, his thumb pressed against the pulse in the hollow of my neck.
Wild resistance against this male rises, clawing, my teeth bared but his gaze sucks me in. He’s the stronger predator and the moment his fingers touch my skin, the stained-glass maze of my emotions shatters into endless fragments, jagged slivers drawing blood as I frantically try to piece it back together.
I’d thought to see death in his eyes. A merciless death, a brutal death, a painstakingly chronicled in the family book of leave-the-Old-Ones-the-fuck-alone death.
I see death.
But not the cessation of breath and body—at least not mine. No. . .my lifepath in that moment changes irrevocably.
Aerinne dies and rises as Aerinne, of the Prince.
It makes about as much sense as my shattered mind.
“Aerinne.”
That single word, accompanied by the claim of his fingers on my skin. The barely perceptible caress of the pad of his thumb in the hollow of my throat, as if he’s tasting my trainwrecked pulse. He shouldn’t be touching me. Why is hetouchingme. It isn’t a touch to convey threat, it’s a touch to convey possession, and my thoughts are as scattered as my soul.
“Nyawira.”
He knows the name only my paternal kin use.
He savors my names and the hand around my throat is not a cage but a cradle. A promise of benevolent ownership, of velvet-covered chains and silk sheets, of lounging in his lap while he sits on his throne, and who am I not to sink to my knees in submission?
My skin burns under his touch and I bite back a specific kind of panic, apprehension, because outside of a fight no one has ever touched me against my will.
No one who I would have denied has had the power.
No.
“Prince,” I say again, all the impotent fury and accusation over Maman’s death and Danon’s imprisonment bleeding in my voice.
“You know my face,” he says, and releases me.
How could I not.
Slowly, lingering, his gaze fixes where our skins meet, tasting of yearning as if he has waited, wanted, denies himself even now.
But even as I start to lean into the touch, fingers itching to return the favor but with a little more blood and claw, I stagger back, rejecting everything, clutching my head. An invisible breeze keeps me upright until the ground steadies under my feet.
Then I straighten, unbending my hunched form with the gingerness of an old human woman.
“Lady Aerinne. It seems I have arrived just in time to preserve your life.” The barely perceptible mockery, delivered with no hint of emotion, infuriates me. But I sense. “You areindebted to me.”
“Then collect.” Thunderstorms darken his aura, hair lifting in static breeze, and I brace for a strike. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
The Prince surveys my face, pausing on my bitten lip. “The dead offer limited use or amusement, little halfling.”
